Today, November 2, the Balfour Declaration is 91 years old. It was the crucial first official recognition of Jewish national aspirations.
Although the declaration itself had little legal status, it was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine, adopted unanimously by the League of Nations in the San Remo Resolution of 1920. This lent Zionism a legitimacy enjoyed by few national movements before or since.
Perhaps most astonishing today, the leader of the Arab movement, King Faisal, supported the declaration when it was referred to in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919.
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